When Presidents’ Day Was Bicycle Day
Long before Washington's Birthday was marked by car sales, Americans celebrated their first president by pedaling.
Every year, Americans mark Presidents’ Day with an orgy of auto sales, kicking-off the car-buying season. Our celebration of George Washington’s birthday is now firmly intertwined with the automobile, a testament to the powerful grip of car culture upon our civic imagination. But more than a century ago, February 22 bore a very different identity: It was Bicycle Day.
Washington’s Birthday inspired local observances in the early republic, with speeches, banquets, and parades. Not until the Gilded-Age in veneration for the founding fathers, though, were these celebrations nationally recognized.. By then, the parades had petered out. Offices were closed, stores were shuttered. The public was at leisure, with little to do.
